Saturday, December 31, 2011

I don't really need to watch this because I actually did buy all 5 seasons on DVD as they came out a few years back but it remains my favorite sitcom of all time. If you have ME-TV where you are, check it out starting tomorrow morning with the originally unaired pilot!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

In 1947, Stan Lee's seven years working in comics must have seemed like a pretty full career. He sat down to sum it all up and exploit it with a book entitled SECRETS BEHIND THE COMICS. After that, he probably intended to write that Great American Novel he always promised. Fate had other things in mind for him, however, and the next 65 years were spent in and around...comic books! Happy birthday, sir, and thank you so much for not just your contributions to the field but for being the character you are yourself!

Well with a couple of sales and a paying gig at the moment, we're on track for being able to make our Internet payment yet again. What that means is that the brand new prequel blog to A GEEK'S JOURNAL, 1976 will be premiering on January 1st! That's right, since I apparently did NOT keep a journal in 1977 we can't go forward but, by popular demand, we are going back in time to 1974 when I was in the ninth and then later tenth grade, ages 14 and 15.

A GEEK'S JOURNAL, 1976, with all the publicity it got early on, has been our most successful with paid advertising. If anyone would like to run appropriate ads on 1974--A GEEK'S FIRST JOURNAL right out of the gate, please write to booksteve@aol.com to inquire about our rates. I'm told they're inexpensive for what you get!

As the days dwindle down for 1976 (as well as the entries as I was trying desperately NOT to run out of pages!) I want to thank everyone for all the wonderful support you've given my teenage self! I hope you'll sign on to time-travel back even further with us this next year!

Sunday, December 25, 2011

We're back! Not a bad splash this week, either. Kind of creative. Not great but...not bad at all. The in-panel TV screen literally frames the full body image. Interesting that by 1971, it would be a black and white television. By that point, nearly everyone I knew had color TV. Even we had had three whole years! The art is jointly credited for this issue to Marie Severin and Jim Mooney but only a couple of panels really show much of Marie. I'd swear this was pure Mooney...and GOOD Mooney, too! Conway still doesn't quite seem to have the characterizations down (to my mind), including that of the guesting Human Torch. That said, though, here we have the beginnings of a storyline that will both tie up the ongoing Llyra plot as well as set up an addendum to Subby's origin story!

Friday, December 23, 2011

1973's THE STING is one of my all-time favorite films--it's a good drama with lots of comedic moments, a great musical score, winning performances from 2 of the biggest stars in the world at the time, award-winning direction and a memorable ending!

THE STING II is...well...not that.

Made a decade later, the filmmakers swore these were different characters (different first names, see?) and thus rationalized the recasting of handsome, blue-eyed Paul Newman with overweight TV comic and character actor Jackie Gleason! Sexy, blond Robert Redford was similarly replaced by curly-haired country singer Mac Davis. But remember! These were NOT really the same characters!

Even though Oliver Reed replaced Robert Shaw (they HAD to replace him. He died several years earlier) as the villain who was now attempting to get back the money he was conned out of by our heroes in what sounds like the plot from the other film...these still weren't the same characters!

One of the all-time great TV icons, Gleason had actually seen his big-screen career thrive in the seventies and eighties starting with SMOKEY & THE BANDIT in 1976 and continuing through a number of well-acted vehicles.

There was also Terri Garr whose star had risen pretty high in the past decade, along with veteran Karl Malden. The plot wasn't bad, the script by the writer of the original. The wonderful ragtime score of the original was replaced here by an all-new but completely unmemorable score by one of my favorite film music composers, Lalo Schifrin.

The whole thing was produced by Jennings Lang, a man known for a number of disaster movies--in various senses of that word.

No matter how you look at it, though, perhaps moreso than any other movie ever, one can't help comparing Gleason and Davis to Newman and Redford...and like anyone else compared to Newman and Redford, they come up wanting.

If you haven't seen THE STING, you might enjoy THE STING II. If you enjoyed THE STING, however, I don't recommend the second one.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

This is a tough one to review. On the surface, it's drawn in a style I don't particularly care for and the lettering is done in a style that makes it nearly impossible for me to read without struggling through every line. Only thing is, by the end of it, I was sorry it was over.

Creators Mike Wood and Ed Suckling have crafted a somewhat eccentric, low-key graphic novel with genuinely relatable characters--a tough act to pull off I'd say, based on how many big name graphic novels feature characters I never care about at all. Mr. Wood's script is, when one is able to decipher it, almost unexpectedly clever.

The plot deals with a zoo, some stuntmen, dead horses, courtrooms, a prison, big money and big ideas, almost none of which end up where you might expect them to end up. The more or less point of view character is the woman on the cover, an overly buxom (but not exploited in the typical comic book manner of recent decades) defense attorney.

At first glance, Mr. Suckling's art is simplistic to the point of being amateurish but as the pages turn, one notices that he actually has a pretty tight grip on shots, "camera" angles and the nuances of the storytelling. I got used to the style and began to actually appreciate the effects he threw in to distract from what could have been panel after panel of talking heads.

Don't get me started on the lettering. Seriously, I am not exaggerating when I say the semi-cursive, scrunched up text was nearly indecipherable at times. Although not a long book, I had to read it in shifts just to rest my eyes.

While that might have been a deal killer in some other instance, here decoding the dialogue was worth the effort. I enjoyed this first volume of PARTY ANIMALS FOR HIRE and hope to see more soon (with hopefully a different style of lettering--hint, hint). It's not going to find mainstream success but if you like something a little different all around, I think you'll find this fits the bill...and it's actually GOOD!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Obviously at this point we can't guarantee getting things to you by Christmas but we still have lots of good stuff on sale, most for under ten dollars! Movie books, Beatles books, mystery and sci-fi novels, comics-related books, records and more! All at Booksteve's Bookstore Plus!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Back briefly to note the passing of comic book legend Joe Simon. Aside from his longtime partnership with Jack Kirby (during which time Captain America was created), Simon was an important editor, writer and artist in the history of the field, eventually becoming an important elder statesman historian, also! Some of my very first comic books--the 1966 Harvey Adventure line--were from Joe Simon.

One of our prize possessions here at the Library is this 1991 volume, THE KID COWBOYS OF BOYS' RANCH, a signed and numbered limited edition with, as seen here, a certificate of authenticity signed in Joe's classic signature. Rest in Peace, sir. And thanks!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all. We'll be taking the next few days off from new posts at this blog as well as at HOORAY FOR WALLY WOOD and SHADES OF GRAY.

Rest assured that we aren't throwing in the towel and, in fact, DAYS OF ADVENTURE, A GEEK'S BLOG 1976, FOUR-COLOR SHADOWS, BOOKSTEVE'S BOOKSTORE PLUS and 1966, MY FAVORITE YEAR will continue to be updated daily. We may be back in time for SILVER AGE SUB-MARINER SPLASH PAGE SUNDAYS. If not, that feature will pick up the following week.

Also, by popular demand--really!--watch for A GEEK'S FIRST JOURNAL, 1974 coming at the beginning of the year!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Yes, we have no money. Yes, we're selling off large portions of our much vaunted pop culture library. BUT...that doesn't mean we aren't also still adding to it when we can. Here, for example, is a book I saw once and only once before---in the basement of Kidd's Book Store in downtown Cincinnati in 1972. They had one copy. I looked at it. I coveted it. But...for some reason I passed on buying it. Never saw it again outside of ads in the back of FM.

Cut to 2011. A couple weeks back I was checking info on a different book on Amazon and lo and behold, I ran across a copy of Denis Gifford's long lost Karloff book...for three cents! THREE! As in 1...2...3: 3! So...adding the required postage of $3.99 still set me back a tad more than the buck fifty it would have cost me back in '72 but meet the newest...and perhaps longest overdue...addition to Booksteve's Library!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

At last, another good splash...in this case literally! With this issue, former SUB-MARINER artist Gene Colan (AKA "Adam Austin") returns to the strip, bringing along former SUB-MARINER inker Mike Esposito (AKA "Joe Gaudioso"). This time they're both using their real names even! Esposito was certainly not the best inker for the highly illustrative art of Colan (that would be Tom Palmer) but the combination, seen from time to time, sorta kinda worked.

At first glance, this page doesn't even look like Colan to me, more like Marie Severin. Perhaps she did the original layout as she apparently did quite often for Marvel covers in those days. Turned sideways and looked at closely, though, it's clearly Gene's work.

And good work it is. We're back to the neatly framed image that's both artistic and intriguing, ensuring that the reader will want to turn the page to see what all happens next.

My only problem with this one is once again the coloring--the pink title lettering, the sickly green logo lettering at the top, the odd choice of green for the water and too much yellow background center.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

In early 1969, a young and still developing Barry Smith did three enthusiastically Steranko-influenced (with more than a dash of Kirby) issues of DAREDEVIL. As if to sign off on that influence, the young Englishman even had Matt Murdock wander into the same alley where Steve Rogers was sneaking a cigarette (!!??) in Jim's first CAPTAIN AMERICA story of just a few months earlier.

Friday, December 09, 2011

Several Beatles and related books on our sister bookstore site this week with a few more to come! If you're a Beatles fan (or are shopping for one for the holidays), there's some hard-to-find stuff here at bargain prices in lesser condition.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

As a member of I.T.C.H., Craig Yoe's International Team of Comics Historians, I suppose I'm technically allowed to consider myself a comics historian. I even have voting privileges in the Eisners as a comics historian! That said, when I personally think of a comics historian, I think of Jerry Robinson.

I first heard his name as a cartoonist in the 1966 PARADE OF COMICS coloring book. Then I read in Steranko's HISTORY OF COMICS of just some of Jerry's importance in the field. It was then I discovered Robinson's own massive history of newspaper strips entitled THE COMICS (the edition under his arm in the picture)which introduced me to so many strips and cartoonists I had never been aware of before at all!

Not content to rest on his laurels, the man who claimed credit for creating Robin and the Joker and whose work influenced Kubert, Ditko and scores of others who followed, was also a major player in the fight to get justice for Siegel and Shuster! For a while he was even signed as a special consultant to DC.

In recent years, he seemed to enjoy playing the role of the elder statesman of comics at conventions and on Facebook (where I was able to "speak" with him once, briefly, and thank him for all his work) but even then continued his work as a historian, publishing or contributing to a number of projects including a recent autobiography!

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

BOB POWELL'S TERROR is the latest offering from Yoe Books and it celebrates the long unsung artist whose fifties horror work could easily stand with the best of the EC crew.

I first discovered Powell with what, ironically, turned out to be some of his final work--the Human Torch and Thing series in STRANGE TALES in the mid-sixties. Even then it was before my time and I discovered it piecemeal through back issues. Then I saw Harvey's reprints of Powell's MAN IN BLACK...CALLED FATE stories. Years later I learned of Powell's involvement with those nasty li'l MARS ATTACKS cards we kids used to share behind the garage when no one was looking.

Other than that, I never gave the man much thought over the next few decades. As I delved more and more into comics history, however, I became acutely aware that Bob Powell was omnipresent! He did cowboys, superheroes, spacemen and some of the creepiest monsters you ever saw in a comic!

ALTER EGO did a lovely tribute issue to Bob Powell a few years back and it whetted my appetite for some complete stories. Now comes Craig Yoe with Volume 2 of his Chilling Archives of Horror Comics, BOB POWELL'S TERROR!

Similar in format to other Yoe Books, BOB POWELL'S TERROR presents a 22 page, highly illustrated and annotated essay/bio on the artist followed by no less than sixteen genuinely creepy pre-code horror tales from Fawcett, Harvey and other companies---two reprinted in high definition from the gorgeous original artwork!

Here's an excerpt from IDW's press release:IDW Publishing and its imprint, Yoe! Books are proud to announce the launch of BOB POWELL'S TERROR, a frighteningly beautiful hardcover collection of this master 1950s cartoonist’s work. Available in comic and book stores today, BOB POWELL'S TERROR offers 148 pages of the best of this cult favorite, including his 1950s most terrifying horror comics, as chosen by his most ravenous fans.

Bob Powell was a master 1950s horror cartoonist delineating some of the most imaginative and incredibly drawn comics in the horror comic book genre. From terrifying ghouls to tantalizing girls, BOB POWELL'S TERRORcollects the best of Powell’s creations.

“Bob Powell rocked horror comics!” enthused Craig Yoe, who designed and edited the book. “The mood, the monsters, the maidens – and the innovative noir-ish stylings – make some coolest horror comics in the history of the medium. And speaking of horror, Bob Powell’s comics go beyond the silliness of many vintage comics of that genre and are actually often terrifying! I don’t recommend night time reading!”

This must-have hardcover begins with an introduction by Eisner winner Yoe, and is full of extensive and revealing quotes from a recently discovered manuscript about his work, penned by Powell himself. The book’s front matter is profusely illustrated with rare ephemera and flawless reproductions of Powell’s original art including unpublished treats. All of the stories in BOB POWELL'S TERRORare carefully scanned and reproduced from vintage comics, many of them quite rare.

Thanks to Yoe Books and IDW, we here at BOOKSTEVE'S LIBRARY have a copy of BOB POWELL'S TERROR to be given away FREE just in time for the holidays!

No fuss, no muss. Just send me an email at booksteve@aol.com indicating which unsung artists you'd like to see covered in future volumes of Yoe Books Chilling Adventures of Horror Comics. One winner will be chosen at random this weekend. He or she will be contacted via email for their address and the book will be mailed out on Monday.

UPDATE: Only received two entries on Friday after yesterday's big rush of same. Contest will end at Midnight ET on Saturday so you still have time to enter. Current plans call for all the winner to be chosen by our totally unbiased kittens. All the names will be placed on a board and the first one the playful l'il kitties knock down wins! REMINDER: You win the copy of BOB POWELL'S TERROR. I make no guarantees that your suggestion will actually get the Yoe Books treatment, just that I will pass them along to Craig for consideration!

UPDATE: We have a winner and that person IS...........wanting to remain anonymous. That said, they have been notified and, in fact, their prize went out in the mail today after a half hour wait in line at the Post Office. Thanks to all who entered and we will be having another giveaway coming up very shortly! Stay tuned!!

Sunday, December 04, 2011

The Tuska/Mooney team here makes this look more like a bad seventies movie poster.

The three very different fonts at the top of the page don't help, especially with the mixture of oddly chosen colors.

Finally, Namor himself, rolling on the ground here, is not the most inviting image of one's protagonist. Gerry was apparently unaware of the adage that every issue is someone's first. If this was my first image of Namor, I'd be putting it back on the stands right now and replacing it with that month's THE INCREDIBLE HULK.

Friday, December 02, 2011

I never met Jerry Siegel but I almost did. I was 29 years old and Superman’s creator was supposed to be a guest at a comic book convention I was attending. I had naively brought along my earliest issue of SUPERMAN for him to sign, unbeknownst to me from the period where he and his co-creator, artist Joe Shuster, had been banned from DC for filing legal motions against them. I’ve never really been into autographs, though. I just wanted to thank the man in person. He wasn’t the best comics writer ever, on the Man of Steel or THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES or on FUNNYMAN or THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS or THE SPIDER or THE STARLING. He wasn’t the most original, he wasn’t the most literate, he wasn’t the most creative. What he WAS, though, was the man who created Superman…and you’re not. Neither Stan Lee, Al Feldstein, Robert Kanigher, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Mark Waid or even Carl Barks created Superman. Jerry Siegel did.

Contrary to what some folks think, Siegel and Shuster were already working regularly in comics by the time of ACTION COMICS # 1. They had appeared in a few Dell Comics issues a couple of years earlier in fact but the pair mainly held court at Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s National Allied. Their FEDERAL MEN was the most popular strip in NEW ADVENTURE COMICS. DOCTOR OCCULT by Jerry and Joe was getting the most fan letters in MORE FUN COMICS. SLAM BRADLEY and SPY were both running in DETECTIVE COMICS. In their other features, they sometimes snuck in names and concepts from the unsold, seemingly abandoned SUPERMAN feature they had created six years earlier.

But comic books weren’t doing all that well in general. In an era of sometimes literally cutthroat distribution, the Major just wasn’t able to make a go of it in spite of the success of the Siegel and Shuster strips he was running. In a much more complicated move than it sounds, his publishing company was taken over completely by his printer/distributors and renamed after the most successful comic book title to date, Detective Comics, Inc. They decided to expand the line with ACTION COMICS, yet another generic anthology title for a dime. In spite of the fact that they were perhaps already over-extended, it was probably a given that the new title would have to have a Jerome Siegel/Joe Shuster strip!

Somebody (variously verified to be Sheldon Mayer, Max Gaines, Vin Sullivan, Whitney Ellsworth or someone else) convinced the powers that be, most likely based as much on the pair’s popularity as anything else, to finally buy SUPERMAN as that new strip.

Had nothing changed, they were still being underpaid for as popular as their work was on ALL their strips. But since something DID change, quickly, they became the poster boys for victims, even as they thought they were enjoying success!

I doubt it’s really possible to overestimate the importance of that first issue of ACTION COMICS to the comic book industry and to 20th Century pop culture. But it wasn’t published in a vacuum and, quite frankly, other than SUPERMAN, there wasn’t anything the least bit memorable in it. It was pretty much the same mix of undistinguished TERRY & THE PIRATES ripoffs, dull and badly drawn cowboy stories and mildly amusing cartooning that featured in the other three titles published by the company.

It was the timing. The end of the Depression. The beginning of the War. And the fact that the distributors allowed ACTION COMICS # 1 on the stands now that the cagey, and somewhat shady, Harry Donenfeld was running things.People actually saw Superman. Comics fans recognized the familiar, clean art style. Then they recognized some of their own wish-fulfillment. Like Superman, they wished they could stand up to the bullies, even as they shied away from girls. They showed it around to their friends and their older brothers. As the war moved closer, the older brothers unexpectedly became the market for comic books which sold a million copies a month with patriotism and good ol’ American propaganda!

Within a year after Superman’s debut, dozens of comic book companies had arisen, each with more specialized and more colorful costumed heroes, combining, just as Jerry Siegel had, elements of pulps and science-fiction and just plain personal fantasies. The thing is…none of them were Superman. There’s just something about being the first.

DC had the pair concentrated on new Superman stories, quickly providing the character with his own magazine in a totally unprecedented move. Shuster had had to take on assistants and set up a studio. They also were expected to pay any assistants themselves out of their DC checks. They were kept so busy that eventually DC started creating SUPERMAN stories without them. In spite of the realities of publishing and the fact they knew they had sold their character to the company, this didn’t sit well with the duo and would eventually lead to their taking legal action to regain some rights to the character.

While all this was going on, copies of ACTION # 1 were no doubt being donated to wartime paper drives along with much other ephemera of the day. Others ended up stuffed in drawers and cabinets or mixed in with stacks of other old comics to be tucked away in attics. A few were perhaps purposely kept as enjoyable memories of childhood.

Over the years, Superman cartoons and serials and radio shows and toys and TV shows and costumes and other merchandising added to the legend. Siegel and Shuster’s personal stories veered off into sadly unfair directions as their character took on a life of his own that was bigger than the boys from Cleveland but also bigger than DC Comics.

Superman still represents an ideal to many people in this world—an ideal of doing what’s right just because it IS what’s right and yet retaining both humility and humanity.

As a comics collector for 45 years I GET the collector mentality. I GET the “Gotta catch ‘em all,” Pokemon aspect of the hobby. Thus I understand why someone might WANT the debut of Superman in ACTION COMICS # 1. That said, the recent buyer for more than two million dollars will never see anything but the cover in its slab. He can’t open it or read it or smell it or in any way relive the feeling of discovering superhero fantasies for the very first time. It’s an important book. It’s THE most important and collectible book in the hobby of comic book collecting. Without ACTION COMICS # 1, there probably wouldn’t even have been a comic book industry for much longer.

That said, and with all due respect to the buyer who undoubtedly has more money than common sense, that is an outrageous and asinine amount to pay for ACTION COMICS # 1!! If you really cared about it for the right reasons—for Superman—and you had that much money to throw away, don’t you think that money might have been better spent on helping people in some way? You know…like Superman. Or did we all learn the wrong lessons from Jerry Siegel?

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Wow! We've added lots of great stuff this month just in time for the holidays including a whole big bunch of never rerun Bob Hope Specials! Here are just a FEW highlights from our latest update. You can see all the rest of the new additions here! Remember, you get rare, cool stuff while the Booksteve Blogs get a cut from each sale to help keep us on the Web! Unless specified, DVD's are seven dollars each with six dollars postage.

This five-disc set contains 24 half-hour episodes of the 1963-64 television series, hosted by Joseph Cotton. Every episode covers a different aspect of Hollywood. Among the offerings: “The Man Called Bogart,” “Sirens, Symbols & Glamour Girls,” “The Immortal Jolson,” “The Funny Men,” “Hollywood USA,” “The One and Only Bing,” “Monsters We’ve Known and Loved,” “Teenage Idols,” “Natalie Wood: Hollywood’s Child,“ “In Search of Kim Novak,” “The Odyssey of Rita Hayworth” and others. Quality is not “remastered,” but this show is so hard to find and a few come with their original network commercials, making this a treat for all film buffs. $25

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1954) in 3-D!

A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert and only an amateur star-gazer and a schoolteacher suspect an alien influence when the local townsfolk began to act strange. In 3-D with a complimentary pair of glasses!

THE LARK (1957)

Stars Boris Karloff, Bruce Gordon, Michael Higgins and Julie Harris reprising their roles from the Broadway play that ran 229 performances in New York beginning in late 1955! Karloff was nominated for the 1956 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Drama for "The Lark" so now you can watch this rarely-seen and obscure film about the story of Joan of Arc, and the people who convincted and sentenced her to death.

ELLERY QUEEN: "DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU" (1971)

This is the November 1971 made-for-television movie that served as a television pilot for the ELLERY QUEEN series. It never sold, but the second movie (which most people have) did succeed. This version stars Peter Lawford as Ellery Queen, Harry Morgan as Inspector Richard Queen, and Bob Hastings, E.G. Marshall and Stefanie Powers. A series of murders where the victims are killed in numerically descending ages puzzles Ellery, especially when the male victims were strangled with blue cords and the female victims were strangled with pink chords.

Broadcast on a local TV station in New York City (the Tony Awards was never telecast coast-to-coast during the early sixties), this 2-disc set contains the entire broadcast with an all-star cast. Eddie Albert, Lauren Bacall, Ray Bolger, Jo van Fleet, Celeste Holm, Helen Hayes, Carol Lawrence, Vivien Leigh, Darren mcGavin, Elliott Nugent, Christopher Plummer, Jason Robards and many others! Available for this month only!

BOB HOPE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (January 13, 1960)

We have another Bob Hope Christmas Special DVD so make sure you mention the 1960 version when you place your order! Bob Hope entertained troops in Alaska this Christmas, with guests Jayne Mansfield, Steve McQueen, Frances Langford, Jerry Colonna, Peter Leeds, Tony Romano and dancer Patty Thomas. This Christmas event was filmed and telecast weeks after the holiday was over.

Monday, November 28, 2011

By special reader request, here from 1970's CREEPY 34 is THE FORGOTTEN PRISONER OF CASTLEMARE, the supposed story behind the FAMOUS MONSTERS tie-in Aurora model from more than five years earlier. Methinks that the folks at Warren just got tired of the questions as to what movie that was from (it wasn't) and decided to finally come up with a backstory to at least vaguely match the model. Art here is by the much-maligned team of Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico (under their joint pseudonym of Tony Williamsune). I never cared for their art back in the day but it's grown on me a lot in recent years looking back through the old comics online and elsewhere. The story is credited to Robert Rosen who may or may not be the reasonably well-known author as he was still in college three years after this came out originally.

About Me

First published in 1968 (I was 9!), I have been writing professionally part-time for more than two decades. I have been freelancing for various authors, editors and publishers for the past three years on the behind-the-scenes tasks of writing.